Here’s a term that’s been around for more than 125 years, but one that describes much of what passes for news today.

Yellow Journalism.

It refers to news reporting that relies on sensationalism, exaggeration, misleading headlines, and emotional manipulation rather than simply presenting the facts.

The term dates back to the 1890s, when newspaper publishers William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer were battling for readers. The more shocking the headline, the more newspapers they sold. Accuracy sometimes took a back seat to profits.

Sound familiar?

Fast-forward to today. Instead of selling newspapers on street corners, media companies compete for television ratings, website clicks, advertising dollars, and social media attention.

The business model hasn’t changed much. Fear sells. Anger sells. Controversy sells. And nothing attracts an audience faster than getting people worked up.

Here are some of the tricks:

• Headlines that exaggerate what actually happened.

• Reporting only the facts that support a particular narrative.

• Leaving out important information that might change your opinion.

• Presenting personal opinions as established facts.

• Turning relatively minor events into national emergencies.

• Repeating a story so often that people eventually accept it as the truth.

And here’s what bothers me most.

You can tell a completely misleading story without ever telling an outright lie. All you have to do is carefully select which facts to report and which ones to leave out.

That’s what makes yellow journalism so dangerous.

And Now We Have Artificial Intelligence

If you think yellow journalism was dangerous 125 years ago, consider what we’re dealing with today.

With the arrival of artificial intelligence, we’ve entered an entirely new era of misinformation.

AI can now create videos that look absolutely real but are completely fabricated.

Think about that for a minute.

You can watch what appears to be an actual television news broadcast, complete with a news anchor, breaking-news graphics, eyewitness footage, and people being interviewed, and the entire thing can be fake.

AI can create a video of a politician, business leader, or celebrity saying something they never said. It can reproduce their voice, facial expressions, and mannerisms so convincingly that most people would have a difficult time recognizing the deception.

It can even create realistic footage of disasters, demonstrations, explosions, or other major events that never happened.

We’re entering an age where you can watch something happen with your own eyes, and it still might not be real.

But there’s another practice that bothers me just as much, and it doesn’t even require artificial intelligence.

Recycling old news to make it look like breaking news.

Here’s a perfect example.

A commercial airplane crashes somewhere in the world. It’s a terrible tragedy, and the story receives extensive news coverage.

Two years later, you’re scrolling through your Facebook feed or another news site, and suddenly there’s a dramatic headline about a plane crash, complete with photographs or video of the wreckage.

Naturally, you click on it. You think another plane has crashed.

But after reading through the article, sometimes digging several paragraphs down or searching for the original report, you discover the accident happened two years ago!

Nothing new happened. There was no new crash. Someone simply recycled an old tragedy to generate more clicks and advertising revenue.

And sometimes you don’t even realize it’s an old story because you’ve forgotten the original event.

The story is real. The pictures are real. The tragedy was real. But the impression that it just happened is completely misleading.

The same thing can happen with stories about crime, riots, natural disasters, political controversies, and almost anything else that attracts attention.

Sometimes old material is shared innocently, but other times the presentation appears deliberately designed to make people believe they’re seeing something new.

And with AI, the ability to repackage, manipulate, and distribute this material has become even easier.

What concerns me most is how quickly it spreads. Millions of people can see a fabricated video or misleading news report before anyone has an opportunity to verify it.

Even when the truth eventually comes out, the damage may already be done.

In the old days, yellow journalists needed printing presses and newspaper distribution networks. Today, someone with a computer, an AI program, and a social media account can potentially fool millions of people.

Yellow journalism used to manipulate how people interpreted the news. Today, technology can manufacture the news itself, while old stories can be recycled to make yesterday’s headlines look like today’s emergencies.

That’s an enormous difference, and one we should all take seriously.

Who Is Really Looking Out for the American People?

Before anyone starts pointing fingers at Fox, CNN, MSNBC, or any other news organization, understand something. This isn’t exclusively a Republican or Democratic problem. It’s a journalism problem.

The American public deserves information, not manipulation. We should be able to turn on the news and learn what happened without having someone tell us what we’re supposed to think about it.

Unfortunately, too many people today choose their news sources based on which ones reinforce what they already believe.

Here’s my advice: Stop confusing news that agrees with you with news that’s telling you the truth.

And remember one more thing.

Many of the men and women who control our largest media organizations live in an entirely different world from the average American. They’re part of a wealthy, internationally connected elite whose businesses, investments, and lifestyles extend far beyond the borders of this country.

When the economy struggles, when communities deteriorate, when businesses close, or when Americans become increasingly divided, these individuals often have financial resources that insulate them and their families from the consequences.

The average American doesn’t have that luxury.

I question whether some of these powerful individuals are nearly as concerned about the long-term future of this country as the ordinary people who have to live with the consequences of the decisions they influence.

Think about it. If you’re wealthy enough, you can live almost anywhere in the world. You can move your money, relocate your family, and protect your lifestyle. But the average American has a home, a job, a family, and roots in a community. We can’t simply pack up and move to another country when things go wrong.

That’s a pretty big difference in how much you personally have at stake.

And that’s why we should be asking a very important question:

Are these media organizations serving the American public, or are they serving the financial and ideological interests of the people who control them?

Because those two interests aren’t always the same.

My Final Thought

Yellow journalism helped sell newspapers 125 years ago. Today, sensationalism generates enormous numbers of clicks, views, and advertising dollars.

And now artificial intelligence has given anyone willing to deceive the public tools that newspaper publishers in the 1890s could never have imagined.

The technology has changed. The temptation to manipulate the public hasn’t.

My advice is simple. Question what you read. Question what you hear. And now, unfortunately, question what you see.

And for God’s sake, check the date!

That shocking plane crash, terrible crime, or political controversy that just popped up in your news feed might have happened two years ago. Or the video you’re watching might have been created entirely by a computer.

Look for original sources. Check when the event actually happened. And don’t assume something is true simply because thousands of people have shared it.

The biggest losers in all of this are the American people, who risk becoming increasingly divided by the very institutions that are supposed to keep them informed.

Maybe it’s time we started demanding journalism again instead of entertainment disguised as news.

Because at the end of the day, the people running these organizations may be able to insulate themselves from the consequences.

The rest of us have to live with them.What’s one thing you know now that would have saved your younger self a lot of pain?

View all responses